“You, you eat like a bird.”
“You’d know, of course.”
“No, not really. Anyway, I hear the expression ‘eats like a bird’ is really a… fall… fall… falls…falcity. Because birds really eat a tremendous lot. But I don’t really know anything about birds. My hobby is stuffing things. You know, taxidermy. And I guess I’d rather stuff birds because I hate the look of beasts when they’re stuffed. You know, foxes and chimps. Some, some people even stuff dogs and cats, but I can’t do that. I think only birds look well stuffed because, well, because they’re kind of passive to begin with.” - Norman Bates to Marion Crane, 1960
Yes, well, so much for that just three years later. By 1963, the birds had decided they had had enough - just like other animals do when they are gawked at by humans long enough and they finally say, ‘I think I’ve had enough of their stupid shit.’
Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘The Birds’ is a great film; groundbreaking in its use of special effects, downbeat and sinister ending (almost unheard of at the time and something Hitchcock had to fight for), and its lack of a traditional score.
But it is also unique among all Hitchcock’s films because in it he and screenwriter Evan Hunter (after ditching almost all of Daphne DuMaurier’s novella), take some time between bird attacks to create backstories and real human emotions for the movie’s characters. In all other Hitchcock films, a character may have traits, or quirks, but these are primarily used to give a reason why a character behaves the way they do. Norman Bates, as an example, is infantilized and so it’s suggested he cracks when confronted with Marion Crane’s powerful sexuality. In many cases, HItchcock’s leading characters are defined by their ordinariness as a way to contrast the extraordinary events they are put through - ‘The Man Who Knew Too Much,” “North By Northwest,” "Frenzy,” “Rear Window,” & etc.
But since the villains in “The Birds” are birds, we need a reason to fear for their victims, to make it really hurt when they get hurt. Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedron) is spoiled, impatient, thoughtless, entitled - but she was also hurt by her mother and is jealous of the relationship Mitch has with his. Annie Hayworth (the great Suzanne Pleshette) is warm, caring, also hurt and empathetic. Lydia Brenner (Jessica Tandy) is grieving, frightened and fragile. The male lead, Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor) may be the least well defined in the picture, but he is at times childish and churlish, sometimes sarcastic.
Even with that, no other Hitchcock movie has such a collection of people with such real stories.
Early on in the film, Melanie drives up the coast to surprise Mitch’s sister Cathy with a pair of lovebirds. She drives to Annie’s house. Melanie is immaculately coiffed, dressed in mink. Annie emerges from the garden, dirt-smudged, tossled hair, gorgeous.
“You want to see Cathy about something?”
“Not exactly.”
“Oh.” Pause. “Are you a friend of Mitch’s?”
“No. Not exactly.” Annie is direct. Melanie cagey. There are beautiful differences between these two.
Later, in the quiet of Annie’s living room, Melanie and Annie have a seven-minute conversation that has no action, no plot points. They just talk, during which they discuss Lydia, Mitch, and Annie and Mitch.
Later in the scene, when Melanie is on the phone with Mitch, Director of Photography Robert Burkes executes one of the loveliest shots of any actor in all of Hitchcock - Suzanne Pleshette in repose and in profile, listening to Melanie talk to her old boyfriend. Hitchcock must have loved Pleshette.
At Cathy’s birthday party the next day, at which there is another bird attack, there is a scene with Mitch and Melanie walking up a dune and talking. It’s another four minutes of character building. We learn: Melanie works for the Travelers Aid Society, she’s taking a course in semantics at Berkely, and meeting with a group “sending a little Korean boy through school.” She has an Aunt Tessa she loves.
“You need a mother’s care, my child,” says Mitch.
“Not my mother’s.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“What have you got to be sorry about? My mother? Don’t waste your time. She ditched us and ran off with some hotel man in the East. Do you know what a mother’s love is?”
“Yes, I do.”
“You mean it’s better to be ditched?”
Mitch, confused, says, “No, I think it’s better to be loved. Don’t you ever see her?”
Melanie looks away and cries. “I don’t know where she is.”
When Mitch and Melanie come down the dune, Annie looks hurt and filled with regret, and Lydia stares at them with daggers. What a contrast! Then the birds swoop in, attacking Cathy first.
After the next attack, in the Brenner’s living room when the birds come down the chimney, and after Lydia finds the killed Dan Fawcett at his farm, whose eyes are famously eaten out, Lydia is exhausted and lying in bed when Melanie knocks on the door.
“Mitch?” asks Lydia.
This is the scene during which Lydia says she’s frightened for Cathy who is at school “…and they have such big windows at the school. All the windows are broken in Dan’s bedroom. All the windows.” Lydia laments that she is not as strong as she’d like to be, and she talks about herself and her husband and how she misses him. “I miss talking to him.”
Melanie asks her if she’s like to rest.
“No, no. Don’t go. I feel as if I don’t understand you at all and I want so much to understand.”
“Why, Mrs. Brenner?”
“Because my son seems to be very fond of you, and I don’t know quite how I feel about it. I don’t even know if I like you or not.”
An hour and 15 minutes into the movie we are treated to that extraordinary scene in The Tides restaurant, where we meet the owner (Lonny Chapman), the anxious lady with her two children (Doreen Lang), the drunk Bible
-quoting Irishman at the bar (Karl Swenson), the fisherman (Charles McGraw) the traveling salesman (Joe Mantell, the actor who famously said to Jack Nicholson, “Jake, it’s Chinatown.”), and Mrs. Bundy (Ethel Griffies), the ornithologist, along with the staff of the restaurant itself. Just a wonderful collection of characters whose portraits are etched with a few choice lines and looks.
This scene is followed by the largest attack yet in the movie, which affects everyone at the restaurant, whom we just got to know. The shot of Mrs. Bundy cowering with her back to us is heartbreaking.
The aftermath of the attack leads to perhaps the saddest moment in any Hitchcock movie, the discovery of Annie dead out in front of her house. Mitch and Melanie then see Cathy crying in the window. After all, she’s been the most attacked person in the entire movie. They get her out of the house and into the car and Cathy, terrorized and traumatized, cries out, “When we got back from taking Michelle
home, we heard the explosion and went outside to see what it was. All at once the birds were everywhere. All at once she pushed me inside and they covered her. Annie! She pushed me inside!”
It’s a marvelous moment for the actor Veronica Cartwright, and just a crushing moment in this most human of all of Hitchcock’s films.